Intelligibity Between Cavendish And The Anti-Newtonians Of France

Theoredical vs Experimental Concepts of Intelligibity between Cavendish and the Anti-Newtonians of France. What is truth? What makes an idea or fact true, partially true, or false? Does it come from the mind, as Plato insisted, or experimental evidence, as Aristotle believed? Conflicts between ideas of truths have often lead to differences between groups, and this remains the case for Cavendish in England and the Anti-Newtonians of France. In making this essay, I strive to answer two questions: In what important ways did Cavendish and the Anti-newtonians differ? And how did this relate to differing ideas of intelligility? To answer the first question requires an understanding of the historical context in which Cavendish’s experiment and the Anti-Newtonians came about,
His most famous experiment, commonly referred to as “Cavendish’s experiment,” involved the use of balanced weights and restorative force configured so as to measure the density of the earth. Of note, the forces in Cavendish’s experiment were extremely minuscule and required unprecedented accuracy to successfully measure. In response, as Mccormish puts it, Cavendish became a “Scientific detective” pursuing and eliminating measurement errors. Although Cavendish was a skilled experimenter, he spent notably less time on theory in his paper; Of the fifty plus pages in his report to the Royal Society, only one paragraph is spent on theory. Mccormish speculates this was because Cavendish saw the calculations as straightforward, but whatever the reason it may be noted that Cavendish did not see an extensive appeal to theory as necessary. Cavendish’s experiment lasted from 1797-1798, and he ultimately concluded the density of the earth is about 5.4 times the density of